Venezia Unica, the city's official ticket portal

Who is behind Venezia Unica

The name Venezia Unica covers two things, and it helps to keep them apart. It’s the city’s online ticket shop. And it’s also the personal card, the “city pass”, that many Venetians use to travel at reduced fares.

The portal is run by Vela S.p.A., the commercial company of Venice’s public-transport group. Vela is almost 90% owned by AVM, the mobility holding wholly owned by the City of Venice, with the rest held directly by the City. The platform was built by Venis, the city’s IT company. It replaced the old Venice Card and Venice Connected systems.

In practice it’s the city’s official box office: buy here and you pay the public company that runs the service, with no resellers in between. The vaporetto operator, ACTV, belongs to the same group: see our ACTV review.

What you can buy, and what you can’t

The catalogue is broad:

• ACTV tickets: single rides, tourist passes (24, 48, 72 hours or one week), plus the Aerobus and People Mover;
• Alilaguna tickets, including connections with Marco Polo airport;
• civic museums, the Chorus churches circuit and other cultural entries;
• municipal car parks, bike sharing and car sharing, public toilets;
• the city access fee, which Vela also handles through a dedicated portal.

What’s missing, for readers of this site, is the private water taxi: it isn’t in the catalogue Vela describes, and we found none on the portal. For a taxi you need to go through the consortia, the booking platforms or the number 199 48 49 50 that the City lists on its water-taxi page. The options are on our operators and platforms page.

Official prices against resellers: the numbers

Official ACTV and Alilaguna fares, compared with the starting prices on our two partner platforms, at the time of checking.

For Alilaguna the price is the same everywhere. For the vaporetto, GetYourGuide’s starting price matches the official one, while Tiqets’ is higher; for timed passes, each option’s price only appears on the listing, before you pay. Remember too that the Tiqets pass excludes ACTV airport connections and lines 16, 19, 21, Casinò and Alilaguna. ACTV’s own rules also exclude lines 16, 19 and Casinò from ordinary tickets and tourist passes.

The platforms’ advantage isn’t price. If anything, it’s the cancellation policy, where there is one, and customer service that usually replies. The Tiqets vaporetto pass, however, is non-refundable. The official portal’s advantage is one less link in the chain, which matters when something doesn’t work at the turnstiles.

Vaporetto or water taxi: the per-head maths

Venezia Unica sells vaporetti, not taxis. But for anyone arriving at Piazzale Roma or the station with luggage, that’s often exactly the choice, and the numbers are surprising. The city fare for a water taxi from Piazzale Roma or the station is €50 to Rialto and €60 to San Marco, per boat.

To Rialto, for four people, the vaporetto costs €38 in total; the taxi at the city fare €50, or €12.50 each. For two, the vaporetto clearly wins: €19 against €50. For four with suitcases, the difference is €12 for the whole group. The taxi, though, spares you the crowded line 1 and, if your hotel has a water entrance, the bridges too. Note: the city fare applies when you start from a taxi station, with supplements for luggage and for passengers beyond the fourth. The consortia’s online prices for the same trip are higher, around €80. Every case is covered on the Santa Lucia station page.

The Venezia Unica card and reduced fares

The card is personal and lasts five years. Enabling it for ACTV services costs €10. To add the reduced fare on water transport, the total cost depends on where you live: €10 for residents of the City of Venice, €20 in the Metropolitan City, €40 in the Veneto, €100 for everyone else. If the holder is a minor, a parent must sign the application and attach a copy of an identity document.

For a tourist staying a few days it isn’t worth it: a 72-hour pass costs €45 and involves no paperwork. It can make sense for frequent visitors or long stays: with the card enabled for water transport, a 75-minute ACTV ride costs €1.50 instead of €9.50. Alilaguna also offers reduced fares to Venezia Unica cardholders, for example €10 airport–Venice, sold only at its own ticket offices; Alilaguna’s site doesn’t say which card enablement you need, so ask at the counter.

There are six ticket offices where you can collect the card: in Venice, Piazzale Roma and Tronchetto; on the Lido, Santa Maria Elisabetta; on the mainland, via Lazzari (Mestre) and Dolo; plus Sottomarina. Other sales points are at Punta Sabbioni, the line 1 Rialto stop and Burano. Opening hours change with the season: check them before you go.

Third-party tickets at the official counters: where it jams

Many ACTV tickets sold by platforms and resellers aren’t the final ticket but a voucher to be exchanged. The Tiqets vaporetto pass, for instance, gives the Venezia Unica office at Piazzale Roma as its collection point. For the pass sold on GetYourGuide, according to the product listing, you exchange the voucher using the booking code (PNR) at a Venezia Unica machine.

This is exactly the step where several problems arise. On Tripadvisor a number of travellers describe vouchers for 24- or 48-hour passes bought from the reseller Venice Link. The codes were rejected by ACTV machines and by Venezia Unica staff, and then couldn’t be exchanged. This doesn’t concern our partners, but it holds as a general rule: the more links between you and the turnstile, the more points of failure. If you buy from a third party, collect or exchange your ticket as soon as you arrive, not five minutes before a train.

What travellers say

The picture is negative, with one caveat. On Trustpilot Venezia Unica scored 1.5 out of 5, but from only 29 reviews, almost all one-star. For a platform handling millions of tickets that’s a tiny sample: these are problem reports, not an average of the experience.

The themes do repeat, though. Payments failing on the website, unanswered emails, refused refunds, unclear museum opening hours. On the Rick Steves forum one traveller reports paying €40 for a pass with an unusable QR code and finding nobody able to fix it. In the replies, the prevailing advice was to do without the card. Other reports, on Tripadvisor, concern validity starting at activation without a clear warning, and tickets the machines won’t print.

For transport, the group directs you to the DIME call centre, 041 041, daily 08:00–18:00. No phone number or email dedicated solely to Venezia Unica appears to be published.

The access fee

Vela is also responsible for selling the access fee (contributo di accesso), the day ticket for entering the historic city that has been trialled in recent years on dates set by the City. In the latest version the fee was €5 if you booked four or more days ahead, €10 if you left it later. Under-14s and guests of accommodation within the municipality didn’t pay. The most recent trial calendar ended in late July. Whether and when the fee returns is up to the City: before you travel, check the official portal cda.ve.it. Anyone arriving from the airport to stay in accommodation within the municipality was exempt in any case.

When to use the official portal, and when not

Venezia Unica makes sense when you want to pay the official price and have time to sort things out yourself if something goes wrong. The platforms make sense when you need a clear cancellation policy and customer service that answers. For water taxis, which aren’t sold here, start with the pages on prices and fares, water taxi against Alilaguna and our reviews of GetYourGuide and Tiqets.